[arch-general] deprecate grub (legacy) - opinion?

[Jude DaShiell]

grub legacy is all that will install on my amd k8 computer for some 
strange reason at least according to debian when I try upgrading grub.

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011, KESHAV P.R. wrote:

> Hi all,
>          I want your opinion regarding whether grub-legacy (core/grub)
> package should be deprecated (downgrade it to extra/community/AUR) now
> that syslinux is in core. THe actual upstream has been dead for 4
> years and every fork (grub4dos, super grub disk, grub-fedora) is
> either lacking in functionality (read: GPT and such support) or being
> deprecated themselves in favour of grub2. Although grub does support
> gpt via a patch (not currently in the grub package), syslinux and
> grub2's gpt support is much better. The background of this message is
> the 'Default Bootloader in AIF' topic in arch-releng. My views
> regarding grub-legacy and syslinux are at
> http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-releng/2011-March/001609.html
> and Dieter's reply at
> http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-releng/2011-March/001610.html.
> 
> I mainly want the opinion of Ronald Van Haren (pressh - i hope i got
> the name right) (core/grub maintainer), and also other devs and TU's
> regarding whether this should be done. If it is not a problem for any
> dev or TU to maintain patches, should any of the grub-legacy  fork(s)
> be deprecated, then its okay to leave the package as it is. But if it
> is a problem to maintain the package, in the light of gpt, btrfs,
> nilfs2 and all other FS and partition table problems (with
> grub-legacy) it should be deprecated IMO.
> 
> Most of the advantages listed for grub-legacy are true for syslinux
> too, except multi-partition booting support (syslinux is limited to
> the partition from which it is booted). The decision taken by dev
> regarding this will (to some extent) determine the default bootloader
> supported in aif, and subsequently the bug-reports etc. If
> multi-partition support if needed, the user can use
> grub2-bios>=1.99~rc1 which is superior to grub2<=1.98 and also
> includes a menu.lst to grub.cfg conversion utility (in grub2-common
> package).
> 
> Regards.
> 
> Keshav
> 
> PS: This can be considered analogous to grnome3 replacing gnome2 in
> the repos although some people don't like it, since it is the policy
> of Arch to package the latest release versions, in which case grub
> should have been out of the repos a long time ago.
> 
>